Countdown: Ten
by KJ4
Summary: The aftermath of "Awkward Times" and the beginning of the countdown to "War of Angels". So...what was on that flashdrive that David gave Bob? What happens when yesterday's heroes are targeted by today's modern gods?


Disclaimer: Don't own Incredibles...that's Disney/Pixar/Brad Bird. Don't own Aberrant...that would be White Wolf (but if I win the lotto...expect me to buy those rights dammit!) Null (who appears at the end of this) was created by NullChronicler and stolen (with permission) by me. Damon Best (though not appearing yet, but mentioned briefly) was created by Pixfan...and also stolen (with her blessing) by me.

Author's Notes: Okay...here we go people, the Countdown to "War of Angels" has begun. I really don't consider this to be an actual story because it's meant mostly to be a series of drabbles set in this strange little merged 'verse I've got going here. However the drabbles to serve a purpose: to explain some things mentioned in "Awkward Times" (like "what the hell was on that flashdrive that David gave Bob?") I also want "Countdown" to serve as a sort of jumping on point for new readers who won't feel too pressured to read all of "Awkward Times", though I do suggest reading "The Dicker Files".

Author would like to thank: Null (who came up with a cool character after reading up on Aberrant and was cool enough to let me use the character), Shahrezad (an insane and funny artist who was REALLY cool and drew some kick-ass pictures of Buddy and David), Crazystick (the sick bastard who got me into writing this sick idea in the first place...I'll get even with you for this, Nick!), Concolor44 (still trying to find where I can locate that novel you mentioned), Shannon K (for constantly wielding the whip and messaging me with death-threats...er...motivational encouragement, Artificus (a crazy young woman from Germany and fun to joke around with), and everyone else who reviewed or gave me some feedback/ideas. Oh...and Demon440...YES, you can use this setting for your Champions campaign (in fact, someone did a write-up of Team Tomorrow using the Champions system)...BTW, give Buddy at least a 500 point base.

* * *

"_According to the Global Geological Studies Institute in Calcutta, a major earthquake hit somewhere in the Indian Ocean, causing several tsunamis to form off the coast of Africa...."_

-CNN

"_Though it has been a week since the coast of Somalia was devastated by several Tsunami, we are seeing the aftermath of destruction caused by forces of that can only be described as nearly biblical proportions."_

-N!Channel news.

"_There has been some speculation that this might not have been a natural phenomenon, that there might have been other forces involved..."_

-NBC News

"_There has been speculation by Utopia officials that there might have been a 'rogue nova' behind the tragedy of Somalia. However, there have been accusations by some world governments, such as China and the United States that Project Utopia maintained several ocean facilities in the Indian Ocean, and that there might have been an incident regarding one of these sites."_

-Fox News

"_Already, the anti-Utopia conservative nutjobs at Fox are accusing Project Utopia for what caused this when we already know the answer: Global damage and climate change caused by the greedy bastards who ran the world before Utopia was formed. Unfortunately, those assholes still have power here in the United States, denying us our true proper place with Project Utopia."_

-Air America, "The Brandi Miller show"

"_And already, the finger pointing has begun. The Teragen did it, Utopia did it, some rogue nova did it, China did it, the US did it, Mother Nature did it, my neighbor's cat did it...and the blame game continues. In the meantime, whoever or whatever caused this is probably out there somewhere laughing their asses off. And then you got us...the lowly mortals on this world who are sitting here watching our leaders point fingers at each other and wondering which one of these idiots is going to make that one big mistake and pushes that shiny little red button that blows up the world. You know...maybe I should come up with a 'Doomsday betting board'."_

-XM Radio, "The Duke Rollo Show"

* * *

Bob Parr had faced many challenges in his life, both as a super and as a husband and father. Of course, having a family full of supers blurred the lines some of the time. Facing off against Doctor Destroyer, that was one of his early challenges as a superhero and probably the first time he actually faced certain death. Marrying Helen and raising a family...that was a challenge that he almost failed because he was focusing on the fact that the glory days had been taken away from him, but he, and his family, managed to pull through in the end. Then there was the time Violet started dating, which brought about a whole new set of challenges (and, in some cases, some really funny moments).

But through it all, Bob had classified all these challenges into one of two groups: "super" and "non-super". Though he admitted that it was an oversimplification of things, this system worked for Bob, especially since he really didn't consider himself an overly complex person. However, after the incident with Syndrome, he learned that one set of problems didn't outweigh the other set and that they both had to be dealt with.

However...this time, the challenge he faced didn't fall into either category, because it didn't just hit close to home on both fronts...it completely rocked everything he believed in to the core of his being. Yes, when the Galatea incident happened six years ago, triggering a new generation of super-powered beings, he knew the world was changing...but he never realized how much it had changed. Back in his "glory days", it was easy to tell the good guys from the bad, what was right, what was wrong...but now, in this "new age of the nova", nothing was as it seemed.

In hindsight, he should have seen this coming. After all, when David Flynn literally showeded up on their doorstep a few months ago, he should have taken it as a sign of what was to come...or, at the very least, tossed the little punk into the next state. In fact, when Violet was approached by Flynn about working for his company, Bob was very tempted to see if he can throw David across the state of Nevada and into Utah, especially after the battle at SST when members of Team Tomorrow and Project Utopia, led by Kari McKeen, attacked his little girl.

_Actually, that's not fair...she's not that little and she handled herself well out there._

Despite that thought, Bob, like any loving father, was still protective of his "little girl". What made it even worse was the fact that Jack, his youngest son, was involved. Again, Bob briefly considered playing "Toss Syndrome's Bastard into Utah", but managed to suppress that urge. He might have been a protective father, but he was no killer. However, that didn't prevent him from throttling the boy for a few seconds.

But if Bob thought that was the worst that could happen, it was the little bombshell David dropped on him in the form of a tiny flashdrive that proved him wrong. He still recalled that conversation only a few weeks ago as if it just happened yesterday.

"_**They know who you are, Mr. Parr," David said as he got up out of his chair. "They always knew...I'm willing to bet they knew the moment Kari McKeen joined up with them and they restored her memory." He walked around his desk, stopping only a few feet away from Bob. "Although, I will level with you, Mr. Parr. You're right about me, I do have an agenda of my own, but believe me when I say that it doesn't include anything so petty as a 'vendetta' with you and your family." He pulled a tiny flash-drive out of his pocket and held it in front of Bob. "You don't believe me, take this home and go through it. Just make sure your computer isn't linked to the net when you access it because it won't work."**_

"_**What is it?" Bob cautiously took the tiny drive from David's hand. Though his instinct to beat the punk to a pulp was still there, his curiosity and the serious tone in the young man's voice stopped him.**_

"_**Oh...just a few things, full video footage of what happened last night, some intercepted audio transmissions from T2M headquarters, and various other goodies that will prevent you from sleeping at night." Again, David Flynn's voice had taken a grim and serious tone as he started to make his way to the door. When he opened the door, he looked back over his shoulder. "If you don't believe me or the stuff on that drive, call up your buddy Dicker."**_

"_**What do you mean by that?"**_

_**David leaned against the door frame of his office, looking down at the ground for a couple seconds before responding. "That the 'good old days' of heroes and villains are gone, Mr. Parr," he finally said. "Everything that you believed in and fought for doesn't matter anymore...because in the end, we're all just pawns to those with real power and the desire to use and abuse it."**_

Bob felt a chill when David said that. He wasn't sure why, perhaps it was the way the boy talked, that tone of voice that held a sense of dread that something was coming and couldn't be stopped. It wasn't until he took the flashdrive home and viewed its contents that the chill not only returned, but pretty much remained with him afterwards. He didn't get much sleep after that, especially when he confronted Dicker who confirmed everything that was on that drive.

So now, here he was, sitting at a picnic table in a city park, twirling the flashdrive in his hand as he waited for Lucius to meet him. One of the things that scared the hell out of him was a particular "contingency plan for dealing with rogue novas" involving the deployment of what they called a "Nova Assault Droid" that looked all too similar to Syndrome's Omnidroid. What scared him wasn't the fact that they had plans for the machine, but the fact that they had improved on the design and there were at least six manufactured and in storage.

_How did this happen? No...how did WE let this happen? How did we not see this coming?_

Those questions had haunted him the last few weeks and he still didn't have any answers. Sure, when new superhumans, now called "novas" began to surface worldwide, he knew change was coming. He even partially approved of what Project Utopia, though he had some reservations about some "incidents", but no organization was perfect and almost always had some flaws.

What he saw on that flashdrive, however, showed that there more than a few flaws. One of the other files was the complete surveillance data packet done on not just himself, but his entire family. Where they lived, where the kids went to school, where Violet worked (prior to her taking the job at SST), where Dash and his friends hung out, where Helen shopped or spent time with her friends...they even had him under surveillance the day he first confronted David Flynn, complete with attached datamarks that displayed his power levels and how much force was to be used against him to contain him.

The bastards even had their star front man, Caestus Pax, waiting to strike if Bob took what they had described as "potential hostile action of any kind." While Bob knew that he was probably one of the strongest supers on the planet, he knew that Pax was more powerful and could probably beat him. But what bothered Bob the most was that he had always thought Pax was a hero like himself...sure, maybe a little arrogant and cocky, but he never thought that Pax. or the supposedly benevolent organization he worked for, would actually target him.

_But they didn't come after me, they targeted Violet and Jack._

"Damn," he heard someone say. "You keep brooding like that, they'll be calling you Mr. Depressionable."

Bob looked up to see a tall black man with a goatee holding a coffee cup in each hand. "Thanks for coming, Lucius."

Lucius set one of the coffee on the table and then sat down across from his friend. "You know," he said, pausing a moment to take a sip of his mocha. "The last time we had one of these so called 'clandestine' meetings, we were telling our wives it was 'bowling night' and we would spend the night listening to the police scanner listening for 'criminal activity', talking about our glory days." He took another sip of his coffee and gave Bob a sad smile. "Who'd have thought, less than a decade later, those days would have returned?"

Bob looked up from the table at Lucius. "Have they, Lucius?" he asked. "Have they really?"

"Look around you, Bob," Lucius said, trying to sound as cheerful as possible. Having known Bob for over twenty years, he could tell something was tearing at his best friend. "The world's changing, supers are allowed to operate out in public...though I don't know why they keep wanting to call us 'novas', but I can get over that. I mean...for crying out loud, a lot of these people are being allowed to not only use their power in public, but they're now marketing out their images and making lots of money."

Bob gave his best friend a tiny grin. "Maybe they'll have us do a cartoon show."

Lucius' reaction was priceless...he choked on his coffee. "That's not funny, Bob," he managed to gasp out. "I still have nightmares about that show...and that...rabbit thing."

"I hear they're releasing a special DVD set with that and other things on it," Bob said, smiling as he watched Lucius shudder at that thought. Then his smile faded as he held up the flashdrive. "But I wish that was the only thing we had to worry about."

"Uh-oh," Lucius said. "I know that tone...that's the 'oh-shit, this-is-not-good-tone', isn't it? Please tell me that I'm not hearing that tone."

"I wish I could, Lucius," Bob said. "But this is serious."

Lucius abandoned his happy-go-lucky tone and spoke softly. "This is about that Pine kid, isn't it?"

Bob shook his head. "Not anymore, Lucius...I wish it was, but after what I've seen and learned over the last month, I'm not sure what this is all about anymore."

"Um...okay." Lucius was confused now. "Would you mind explaining this to me? Because I feel like I've just started watching a movie, but missed the first half of it, so could you please fill me in and tell me what the hell is going on?"

"Lucius, what do you know about Project Utopia and Team Tomorrow?"

"Not much...just the usual stuff they've mentioned. A UN sponsored organization that is helping to make the world a better place...if you actually buy that line."

"You don't?"

"Let me put it to you this way, Bob. Yeah, I've seen the good that this group has done in the world, but something strikes me as being a little too...if you'll excuse the term...whitewashed to me." Lucius was serious now. "It also bothers me when the bastard who originally destroyed our lives gets elected mayor and I now recently learn that he has invited Project Utopia to set up a Team Tomorrow branch in our city. It's bad enough that I keep hearing about Project Utopia trying to pressure our own government to hand over our NSA files, but now we have these bastards walking around in our own backyard." He took another sip of his coffee before continuing. "As for the Pine bastard...I'm not sure of what to make of him, but after what he's said and done, I partially blame him for bringing the Utopians down on us."

"They would have come for us, eventually," Bob said. "They already had files on my family."

"What?" Lucius couldn't believe what he was hearing. "How?"

"McKeen," Bob replied. "When she erupted and joined Utopia, they were able to fix her memories that we had altered. I don't think she had any interactions with you, but she pretty much spilled the beans on my family."

Lucius shook his head. "That bitch," he muttered. "I knew she was bad news when she went nova. Did you catch her interview a few months ago when she bashed the NSA? It's bad enough we see pictures of her and Pax every other week...at least she's been out of sight lately."

Bob smiled, failing to hide the pride in his voice. "That was Violet's doing. From what I understand, she broke McKeen's jaw."

"Good for her," Lucius chuckled. "Told you that Violet had some spunk."

"Maybe too much," Bob sighed. "She took the job with SST."

"What? Really? You okay with this this?"

"Honestly? No." Bob shoved the flashdrive across the table to Lucius. "But knowing what I know now...I'm not sure what to think."

"What's this?" Lucius asked, holding up the drive.

"I was told that it was something that would prevent me from sleeping at night," Bob said. "Unfortunately, they were telling the truth."

"They got me on here, don't they?"

Bob shook his head. "No...not you, Lucius. But they know about Damon."

Lucius' eyes widened at that revelation. "How is that possible? We kept his powers a secret."

"Utopia's been watching him since he used his powers to save some people from that refinery fire a couple years ago."

"Did they sign him on?"

"No," Bob said. "They've been keeping tabs on him, but he's not the only one. Blazestone's daughter signed on, and they're trying to recruit a couple others."

"Tanya signed on?"

"That's not all," Bob said. "Read the files...Utopia's got stuff that looks suspiciously familiar. They got Omnidroids, Lucius."

"Omnidroids?" repeated Lucius. "As in 'giant nearly indestructible metal walking death machines'...those Omnidroids?"

Bob nodded and Lucius cursed silently under his breath.

"This is big, Lucius, really big." Bob paused to take a sip of his untouched coffee, savoring the black bitter taste, hoping it would momentarily overpower the bitter taste in his mouth that was already there. "And it happened so fast, right under our noses."

"So what do we do now?" Lucius asked. "We can't just sit by and let this happen."

"At the moment, nothing," Bob replied. "Read what's on that drive...show it to other 'old timers' like us, and get a hold of me in a couple weeks."

"You do realize that there aren't many of us oldtimers left, right? That psychotic whackjob that used to call himself your sidekick made certain of that."

Bob looked down at the table, fighting back the wave of guilt he felt whenever Buddy Pine was brought up. He often caught himself sometimes wondering if he hadn't been full of himself back then and actually taken the enthusiastic kid under his wing...that if things might have turned out differently.

"Sorry," Lucius said. "Didn't mean to bring that up."

"Better you than someone else," Bob said.

"Yeah," Lucius chuckled. "You probably would have tossed them out into the Pacific."

Bob couldn't help laughing as well. "Yeah, well Flynn keeps thinking I'm going to throw him into the state of Utah?"

"Are you?" Lucius asked.

Bob shrugged and smiled at him. "I don't know, Lucius, not yet anyway...."

* * * * *

As one of the agents assigned to monitoring the Parr family, William Reese had always considered his job boring. Following around a nova's family that seemed more intent on "blending" in with regular society tended to be monotonous and, if it weren't for the healthy salary he was being paid, he would have requested a transfer. Actually, he was still considering a transfer and was going to put a request in, but killed that idea last week when some sort of disaster hit the east coast of Africa, causing Project Utopia to devote most of its resources to stabilizing the region. Though he'd only seen mostly news footage, he still couldn't believe what he saw.

A series of tsunamis...multiple giant waves played havoc in international shipping lanes, destroying several freighters and ocean liners before slamming into Somalia, wiping out several coastal villages and even going a mile or two inland before calming down. The destruction was being referred as being "of biblical proportions" by some network newscasts. People were still speculating who was behind it, and he had a feeling that, pretty soon, Utopia-friendly networks would be saying that some rogue novas, possibly the Teragen, were responsible. He was also certain that the conspiracy nuts were going to say this was some Utopia project gone wrong.

_Not that it matters either way,_ he thought, _I'm still stuck here conducting surveillance on some has-been and his family who won't grow up and join the 21st century._

However, the conversation he recorded from his surveillance van was very interesting. Interesting enough that he immediately shut the equipment down as quickly and return the to the safe-house as soon as possible. He didn't want to risk sending it out from an "unshielded" source like the surveillance vehicle. He had seen the briefings on David Flynn and knew that little shit would have probably detected any transmission if they were sent out. The best bet would be to get to the safe-house and hope the shielding and firewalls were enough to keep that punk out of the system.

Unfortunately, Reese was too lost in thought to pay attention to the intersection and failed to see the young dark haired Native-American man step in front of the vehicle until it ran into him. The next thing he remembered was being flung toward the dashboard from the collision, his seatbelt preventing him from slamming his head into it, and his van suddenly going airborne, flipping over after colliding with something that did not move.

Then there was the jarring crash as the van hit the ground, rolling a couple times before miraculously resting right-side up on it's now mangled wheels and broken frame. Reese shook his head, trying to clear his vision as he heard footsteps followed by the sound of rending metal as the door was ripped off. He felt himself being pulled out of the vehicle and then unceremoniously dropped to the ground, causing him to groan in pain as he realized that he had some broken ribs. He blinked a couple more times and his vision cleared as he saw his rescuer, the man who had stepped in front of his van.

Reese panicked as he saw the man pull out what appeared to be some strange high-tech looking pistol and, without looking, pointed it at the remains of the van and pulled the trigger. Reese involuntarily flinched, expecting to hear a shot and some sort of explosion, but was surprised when all he saw was cackling blue sparks briefly bathe the van before dissipating. Then the stranger pointed the device at him and puled the trigger again.

Reese flinched again and felt a mild electrical shock for a brief moment as every electronic device he had on him shorted out.

"What the hell?" he managed to say.

The young man smiled at him as he put the device back in a shoulder holster under his jacket. "David wanted me to tell you to relay this message to your masters at Utopia: The Parrs and their immediate friends and family are off limits as of now. This is our way of being nice about it." He then turned to walk away, but stopped after a few steps and looked back over his shoulder. "And if you try something like this again," he added, "we'll be targeting your safe-houses here in town."

Reese groaned again as he watched the man walk away before disappearing around a corner.

"Shit...I really need to put in for a transfer."


End file.
